I feel like you're not paying attention here. The original comment that you replied to said, essentially, "The bad thing about these sorts of acquisitions is that orphaned customers will be gun-shy about relying on another startup like this, even if that startup is aiming for a sustainable business rather than a liquidity event."
Our fear is that bootstrapped companies aiming for long-term reliability will have trouble finding customers because the customers have been burned before by a company that, from their perspective, looked very much like yours but turned out not to be reliable at all. That's where the difficulty finding customers comes in. Imagine setting up a plumbing business in a world where 75% of plumbers were actually armed robbers. Sure, you have the nominal advantage of actually being a real plumber, but how many people do you think will take a chance on you after the last three plumbers cleaned them out?
And bootstrapped companies by definition don't take a lot of funding. Once you get into the VC game, a reliable business with steady income income is no longer enough, because that isn't how investors make money. Once you take venture capital, your goal is some sort of liquidity event, like this sale.
Our fear is that bootstrapped companies aiming for long-term reliability will have trouble finding customers because the customers have been burned before by a company that, from their perspective, looked very much like yours but turned out not to be reliable at all. That's where the difficulty finding customers comes in. Imagine setting up a plumbing business in a world where 75% of plumbers were actually armed robbers. Sure, you have the nominal advantage of actually being a real plumber, but how many people do you think will take a chance on you after the last three plumbers cleaned them out?
And bootstrapped companies by definition don't take a lot of funding. Once you get into the VC game, a reliable business with steady income income is no longer enough, because that isn't how investors make money. Once you take venture capital, your goal is some sort of liquidity event, like this sale.